Topics - Cainad (dec.)

You know who I miss the most? Calvin. I grew up with Calvin; he was always six years old but he was always older than me. He was a child sage, and I didn't always understand him but we had lots of fun together, Calvin, Hobbes, and I. He knew from the very beginning that school was there to beat his mind into shape, and he rebelled not only by outright refusal to be contained, but by shaping parts of his mind before those parts could be squeezed into public school molds. He knew, like all children know, what it means to have a good time, but he knew it consciously at such a young age. What's more, he laughed in the face of anyone who tried to tell him differently, right before dropping a water balloon on their head. Calvin knew the TV was there to satisfy the sweet tooth of the mind, and he let it work its glittering magic on him every once in a while, but it never really got to him. Partly, this was because he knew what exactly it was doing, and partly because of Hobbes.

I miss Hobbes too. Hobbes knew what fun was just as well as Calvin did; sometimes he knew it better. He was a voice of reason, but never too much reason. Just enough to keep Calvin from riding that wagon over too high of a cliff, just enough to make sure that chucking water balloons and snowballs was always more fun than the TV. Hobbes was there to put a jolt of Life back into Calvin's existence at the end of the daily public school slog.

But Calvin's gone now. I don't know where he went or what he does now, but I think he may have grown up. He probably didn't mean for it to happen; it probably snuck up on him when he wasn't looking. Once he grew up, he stopped really being Calvin, you know? And the worst part is, growing up was the only thing Hobbes couldn't save him from. Without the real Calvin, Hobbes is just a stuffed tiger, and without the real Hobbes, Calvin can't be the real Calvin we all knew. It took both of them to survive in this world, and if we had them here today they'd know how to deal with the ever-growing weirdness and sickness of our society and they'd show us all how it's done.

But one cannot exist without the other, and now they're both gone. Maybe if we could find them they'd tell us how to find Curly.

Last night, my friend decided that my dozing off on the common area couch was not acceptable, seeing as the night was still very young. She retreated into her room and returned with a small chocolate-coated candy that contained the same amount of caffeine as two normal cups of coffee. Now, normally I'm not dumb enough to let my self-destructive impulses direct me to consume caffeine in the evening when I have class the next morning, but something about this friend brings out the worst in me.

Within fifteen minutes, I had bolted out of the building and climbed into a tree, jittering in quiet reflection of what an incredibly bad idea it was to eat that stupid candy. When they finally found me, she directed me to eat not one, not two, but THREE more of these infernal caffeine bombs. I don't recall a time when I have ever consumed more than four cups of coffee in a day, and now I've just had twice that much in the span of half an hour.

I spend the next hour or so jumping about the common area, providing entertainment as the drugged chimpanzee for my awful friends. After climbing on the pipes that line the ceiling ceased to be sufficient distraction, I attempted to hide in my armoire, insisting that there were leprechauns out there who wanted to eat my spleen. Of course I didn't really think that, so much as I was trying to convince them that I was in no fit state to interact with my fellow humans and should be allowed to twitch in peace. I was dragged out against my will and told to go bother a friend of mine across the hall who was trying to do a project for his biology class. I attempted to resist, but repeated insistence overcame what paltry defense I had against bad ideas. Also, it seemed like a funny thing to do at the time.

Now, my friend across the hall very quickly picked up on the fact that I was in a bad way, and placated me for a full five mintues by playing "The Sinister Minister" on YouTube on his computer while he spoke with my caffeine-pushing friend about what the fuck she had done to me. Once these five mintutes had passed, something snapped. I removed my shirt, took off my shoes and put them on my hands. I then burst out of the room into the common area, my bare torso and arms covered in bright red welts from the previous day's paintball antics, screaming "WHERE IS YOUR RELIGION NOW?! I AM YOUR GOD, AND THE WORLD IS MY CHURCH!" I graced their sinful, filthy beings with the cleansing touch of my divinely imbued hand-shoes before curling up in the fetal position on the floor, contented with my work.

When I finally was able to rise and walk about again, the friend I had come to disturb from his work said to the caffiene pusher, "Now is an appropriate time." The caffeine pusher nodded, looked me in the face, and she told me there was no caffeine in those candies.

The real world is disappearing underneath our feet and right before our eyes. In modern times the spectacle has replaced the real; the image, the perception of things is all that matters anymore. Nothing we do matters unless you buy the t-shirt and update your Facebook status and take some crappy pictures and text everyone to let them know you bought a t-shirt, updated Facebook and put up some crappy pictures on it.

Personal experiences is no longer enough, We rely on a constant stream of inane babble to validate our existence. Communication has become so easy and so cheap that there is no longer any real information contained in what we say. For every one message that relates to a real physical happening, there are thousands more that amount to nothing beyond "I'm here. Are you there?"

As social animals it is natural for us to derive pleasure from interacting and communicating with each other. But we've made this communication so freely available--in fact you're usually considered something of a social pariah if you don't partake in this modern Soma--that we've become thoroughly dependent on it even as it becomes less and less satisfying. All this endless chatter is like a shower that never gets quite hot enough, so you twist and turn to get as much of yourself under the lukewarm communication as possible. The air chills your skin and you stay in longer and longer because you keep hoping that eventually the water will heat up and you'll finally feel satisfied and clean and be willing to step out into the chilly air. But there's no external power, no reality heating the water; it's just the heat of thousands of other tepid bodies, everyone showering with each other's runoff so it never gets above body temperature and we never get clean.

My generation has destroyed information. The world ends not in fire or in ice, it ends not with a bang or a whimper...

I don't really know how I got wrapped up in all of this. There was a time when I was just another bored kid, a bored Army brat to be precise, who would read anything for an intellectual kick. Fiction, occult literature, pseudo-occult literature that's dumbed down for typical teenagers and other soft-headed types, and eventually the nigh infinite supply of jokes and weird crap known as the Internet.

When all your friends are "new friends" and you know they'll be gone in a few years at most, you start to get desperate, you know? Without the craziness of hanging out with buddies to satisfy your need for novelty and excitement, you look to other sources... and I found them. Internet humor sites, mainly, but somewhere deep in the underbelly of the Weird, I found something different. Something called Discordianism.

"A joke disguised as a religion, or a religion disguised as a joke" was the soundbite description I got. "Perfect!" I thought. I'm not religious, and the guys who wrote this silly holy book, the Principia Discordia, seem to have a sense of humor that parallels mine, so why not mess around by pretending to be a Discordian?

Here's the thing, though: pretending to be a Discordian and actually being a Discordian are not all that different. Some would probably tell you that there's no difference there at all. That's how it draws you in, see. First you think that you're just part of a ridiculous joke, and then you get so into the joke it seems real, but then it's a joke again, and then Reality is the joke and you forget where the hell you were going with this nonsense in the first place.

Once I found that there were active Discordian communities online, I started hanging out with them. Swapped a few jokes and ideas, listened more than I spoke (or rather, read more than I wrote), and the rest, as they say, is the future.

Welcome to the First Church of the Wrath of Baby Jesus, where we respect the old-fashioned ways, even if we think they weren't quite old-fashioned enough for our tastes. Here the fear of God is still top dog, on account of all the other dogs being complete pussies.

Baby Jesus doesn't put up with your shit. If weekly fire and brimstone sermons don't get you to shamefully hide your sins from society like a normal human being, then by God, once the Wrath is done with you, you won't be able to tell your ass from your elbow. What's more, you'll like it that way and be grateful for it.

The Church of the Wrath tells only Truth. We're not gonna bullshit you and tell you everything's okay when it's not. In fact, we'll probably start screaming before you even know there's anything wrong. Join now and get in on our limited-time offer to become part of our Canned Goods and Bullets Drive. How does it work? Donate thirty dollars a month to the Church for our stockpile of canned food and ammunition, and then when civilization goes to Hell in a handbasket and the world begins to burn, we promise we'll skip over your house when we begin trawling through the neighborhood for food and supplies.

Come to the First Church of the Wrath of Baby Jesus: We're not weird like the others!

WASHINGTON — The raucous protests at congressional town-hall-style meetings have succeeded in fueling opposition to proposed health care bills among some Americans, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds — particularly among the independents who tend to be at the center of political debates.

In a survey of 1,000 adults taken Tuesday, 34% say demonstrations at the hometown sessions have made them more sympathetic to the protesters' views; 21% say they are less sympathetic.

Independents by 2-to-1, 35%-16%, say they are more sympathetic to the protesters now.

The findings are unwelcome news for President Obama and Democratic congressional leaders, who have scrambled to respond to the protests and in some cases even to be heard. From Pennsylvania to Texas, those who oppose plans to overhaul the health care system have asked aggressive questions and staged noisy demonstrations.

The forums have grabbed public attention: Seven in 10 respondents are following the news closely.

"No one condones the actions of those who disrupt public events," House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said in an op-ed article published in today's USA TODAY. "But those in Washington who dismiss the frustration of the American people and call it 'manufactured' do so at their own peril."

White House adviser David Axelrod questioned the USA TODAY survey's methodology, saying those who report being more sympathetic to the protesters now were likely to have been on that side from the start. "There is a media fetish about these things," Axelrod said of the protests, "but I don't think this has changed much" when it comes to public opinion.

A study by the non-partisan Pew Research Center concluded that 59% of the airtime last week on 13 cable TV and radio talk shows were devoted to the health care debate.

In the USA TODAY Poll:

• A 57% majority of those surveyed, including six in 10 independents, say a major factor behind the protests are concerns that average citizens had well before the meetings took place; 48% say efforts by activists to create organized opposition to the health care bills are a major factor.

• There's some tolerance for loud voices: 51% say individuals making "angry attacks" on a health care bill are an example of "democracy in action" rather than "abuse of democracy."

• Some actions are seen as going too far. Six in 10 say shouting down supporters of a bill is an abuse of democracy. On that question, unlike most others, there isn't much of a partisan divide: 69% of Democrats and 58% of Republicans agree.

In Hagerstown, Md., Wednesday, nearly 1,000 people turned out for a forum held by Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin; only 440 could fit in the community-college theater. The crowd often interrupted the senator, but was generally respectful.

In State College, Pa., Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter was jeered at a forum at a Penn State conference center. The 90-minute meeting at times became a shouting match between bill backers and foes.

Contributing: The Associated Press

let me be among the first to say: FUCK

Alright, so this is proof positive that people are swayed by blatant, sensationalist lies shouted in an angry voice.

This is a pdf sheet of address label-sized stickers (Avery 8660). Half of them say "Most men secretly hate women, and most women secretly think they deserve it" and the other half say "Most women secretly hate men, and most men secretly think they deserve it."

Print these out, and put them up all over the goddamn place. Then report back with stories of how being exposed to this idea has caused men to devolve into women-haters.

Okay, take this situation:1) My aunt and uncle, "T" and "R" live in my grandparents' house because they are both out of work and the grandparents are old enough to need someone in the house to care for them.

2) "T" cannot work a regular job because she is mentally disabled from a head injury, and "R" is trying to recover from a massive retinal tear that requires a lot of time and rest to heal. Sustained high blood pressure is enough to prevent it from healing properly, in which case he will be permanently blind in that eye. Oh, and his other eye is forming a cataract.

3) My grandfather is aged and ailing, and my grandmother is even more so. She may be on her way out.

4) Two of my aunt's sisters, my aunts D1 and D2, are both healthy, employed, married to husbands who are healthy and employed, and own homes.

Now, given these circumstances, consider that D1 and D2 have "found" some evidence of computer misconduct (on a computer which D1 stole from her job) by T and R. D1 and D2 have pressed upon my grandfather, who is ancient and preoccupied with the poor condition of my grandmother, his wife of 50 years, to have T and R thrown out of the house.

T and R own nothing but the clothes on their backs and a car. They have done nothing but help my grandparents in their old age. They are unable to work, and putting R in a stressful situation and preventing him from resting will cause him to go blind in one of his eyes.

So my question for the PD.com ethics committee... this is not okay, ever, right? This is the sort of thing you disown relatives over, yes?

"We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country," Obama said. "But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States."

The idea is that some people can't be prosecuted for anything, but they still seem like dangerous or shady characters, so we'd better keep them locked up. Of course, with the planned closing of Guantanamo Bay, no one will know where any of these people are being kept.

Of course, as defenders of the president's idea will remind you, no one ever said anything about applying this policy to future detainees.

Ha. Ha. Ha.Funny.

Mr. President knows how the law works, and so should you. There's this little thing called “precedent,” and in this case it basically means that if no one in power stomps on this idea and calls it out for what it is, it essentially becomes accepted practice. That means the USA will have accepted that it's okay for the government to detain someone for as long as they feel like, without trial, for no reason other than that they suspect the person might maybe possibly be dangerous. And they'll laugh at the poor sucker if he dares suggest that he's entitled to something silly and stupid like due process of law.

Once we, the people, let government have that power (and believe me, we will, being the simpering security-worshiping government kiss-ups we have become), do you really believe that they'll ever give it up?

Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.Not funny anymore.

If “indefinite preventive detention” doesn't make you spitting angry, then you'd better cancel your membership to the “I Like Freedom and Civilization” Club right about now.

At least the terrorists aren't pretending to be my friends and protectors. At least they're supposed to be my enemy. I'd rather be killed by an enemy than betrayed by my government under the pretense of protecting me.

Yes that's right folks, I came up with a dumb idea for a theme, and I'm requesting your help in making yet another issue possible!

One of the issues that often comes up in this community is the difference between what I will call "cheerful" and "angry" Discordianism, for lack of better terms. The distinction between the Black Iron Prison and the Golden Sphere of Possibility is one facet of this: they address the same subject from different angles.

Basically, what I'm envisioning is an issue where we juxtapose angry, in-your-face Discordian rants and essays with silly, funny, and light-hearted pieces. This theme will be complemented by putting Darker And Edgier images on one page and lighter, brighter images on the next page (possibly mixing up the angry rants with the cheerful pictures and vice-versa on some pages).

I will commence digging for essays. If you have written or can recall any essays that had either a distinctly angry or bitter tone or a distinctly cheerful or positive tone, post them here.

ALSO, ATTN OTHER INTERMITTENS EDITORS: Please check this thread from time to time to make sure I'm not stepping on your toes. I will be posting lists of what works I plan to include, and I'll do my best to make sure I don't use anything already reserved for another issue (which I've already done once ), but ONLY YUO can prevent my dumb mistakes.

You're coming dangerously close to becoming one of the fringe loonies. You laugh at their weird jokes, ponder their quirky sayings, and maybe you've even read some of their bizarre essays and publications. Maybe you've even thought, once or twice, that there just might be something worthwhile amidst all their crackpot buffoonery.

For crying out loud, get out while you still can.

They might have some novelty value, but ultimately they're nothing but a modern mental circus act. A freak show of ideas. A little playing around with one's imagination is all well and good, but that's all it is: playing around. At the end of the day, we all need to come back down to the kind of thinking that keeps our society running smoothly. How are you supposed to get any real work done if you're off in La-La Land, questioning your motives and the motives of others?

We do what we do in our everyday lives because that's what we need. It's what you need, and it's what society needs. The fringe loonies like to make up fairy tales and science fiction stories about what's "really" going on inside our heads. There's nothing substantial about what they say. You know as well as we do that you're a completely rational person, and there's always a good reason for what you do, even if you can't remember exactly what it is at any given moment.

So quit listening to their ridiculous ranting sermons, quit reading their obnoxious psychobabble, and go back to reputable sources of ideas. Television, mainstream news; stuff like that keeps society happily humming along like it is.

So far, I've only seen one explanation for the origin of this "Zalgo" nonsense: hxxp://knowyourmeme.com/forums/1-general/topics/35-zalgo

Quote

I’m leaving this because it is officially over.

Zalgo was originally created in 1998 as a Super Hoax/get rich quick scheme titled “Bawaji” by now defunct short-film studio Zeke and Ralph Productions (ZNR) in Portland, OR. The proprietors of ZNR, Robb and Nolan (last names witheld- Im sure you’ll understand why) had originally decided on a UFO hoax but, later deciding UFO’s were real, thought a more plausible hoax would be something leading to the end of the world hysteria surrounding 2000 and the Y2K. We were going to create and sell a product that “offered nothing, did nothing, promised everything and cost a fortune”. Thus Bawaji was born. Unfortunately no one could spell it right so we had to change the name.

What we needed was a product that sold exclusively from word of mouth and had nothing to do with elegant code, shiny finishes, solid workmanship or quality merchandise- we needed mass praise for having done nothing and we needed referrals. We used to define the referral process as “That hive-minded zombie algorithm that sensible people have deep embedded in their psyche which allows them to abandon research and logic for the ease of simply taking someone else’s word for it”.

Then we got jobs and raises and promotions at our real places of business and Bawaji/ZAlgo got put on the back burner.

Until late 2003, 2004.

As the internet became an entity more closely resembling what it is today we started working on Bawaji/ZAlgo as a hoax simply to mess with people more than anything else. There was no longer the Get Rich Quick angle because we couldn’t imagine how to actually do that without going to jail. We decided that religious cults are always fun and had set out to play at starting one based around the internet as an living entity and some darker overtones.

Our original idea was to found a cult based on Christian principles but later deduced that most Christianity-based cults go horribly wrong and usually end up with the leaders dead or in jail so we figured why not start with a doomsday cult and expect that it will go horribly right?

What we really needed, however, was more time and a clear deadline. Our original plans for Bawaji only gave us less than two years between the day we had the idea and 01.01.2000, not nearly enough time. What we figured- using Jim Jones, David Koresh and Heavens Gate as templates- was about a decade and the then-obscure Mayan Baktun calendar year 2012 was close enough as anything was going to get.

We decided on the date 4.04.2012 for three reasons- 12.21.2012 was taken, 2012 was as good a year as any and 404 was a popular number on the internet and the numerologist conspiracy theory nutjobs would have a field day with it.

Now all we needed was a deity. Originally going back to the intended marks as being “hive-minded zombie alorythm” types we decided a good deity name would be ZAlgo. (The “hive-minded zombie algorithm” was shortened to ZAlgo, as you may have seen it on the ’net.) We used a lot of typical “He Who Waits Behind the Wall” (referring to the mythical locked gate in Jerusalem that, when breached, will begin the End Of Days juxtaposed against Stephen Kings He who Walks Between The Rows from Children of the Corn) and “will sing the last song at the dying of the earth” which was inevitably shortened to “sings the last song of earth” which was plucked from Norse mythology. Those guys sang of EVERYTHING. Believe it or not some of the other stuff surrounding Zalgo we had nothing to do with at all. It did pick up a certain amount of its own steam for a while.

But to sell it all we had to do was say H.P. Lovecraft had written of ZAlgo.

Of course he hadnt. Ever. In none of his works has Lovecraft ever referenced anything named ZAlgo. We expected to get called out on that first and had even considered spreading internet rumors about a lost Lovecraft short story or letter or something but then “it must be true- I read it on the internet” took over so we just didnt pursue that.

Thus ZAlgo was born (admittedly without the capitalized “A”) and he was to be the Bringer Of Chaos- neither good nor bad. He just WAS. Or was NOT as it evolved.

The first logical dropping off point for Zalgo was the internet bulletin boards because those kids will buy into anything. We expanded on ideas by Marilyn Manson of bringing hopeless disillusioned nobodies into the mix because they have an infinite amount of collective income and no common sense to spend it on but more so because they are an un-leadable group starving for a leader. Add to it the Anonymous freedom provided by the web and the kids like you find on 4chan’s /b/tards rosters and you get an army of pliable minds wiling to disrupt and spam and create repetitive chaos simply because they have little else to do with their time.

ZAlgo was a forced meme before we even knew what a forced meme was.

Its important to point out that ZAlgo never originally was intended to be a “he” at all. ZAlgo just was, or was not, hence the black tendrils. I originally defined ZAlgo as “simply encroaching darkness” and had mentioned that if it could be seen then it would look kinda like Spiderman’s nemesis Venom and had drawn a quick representation on the funnies page during a rather dull sales meeting with a black Pilot G-2 gel-roller pen. Basically it was Venom kiling Ziggy… damn I hate Ziggy. I still have that cutout from a paper in 2003.

The rest is history, I suppose. The cult never even got close to getting started, the meme as it would be called today is dying out and the /b/tards are tired of the reference. Even Wikipedia wont carry the page anymore and google searches are all but nonexistent.

And we never made a dime from it.

/ZAlgo

Now, I don't know if this story is bullshit, and I don't care. However, I do think that this is prime territory for us to MAKE more bullshit, and spread the air of confusion. Anyone who googles Zalgo gets little more than 'it's a weird thing that appeared on the internet' and a few dozen of the signature Zalgo-shoops of popular comics. As far as I know, "Zalgo" appeared out of practically nowhere.

So I suggest that we create a handful of alternative origin stories for the Zalgo phenomenon. They should clearly differ from the story quoted above, and from each other. The stories will then be spread around, with the intent of generating confusion and disagreement.